A Self-Aware Contract for Decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Commerce

Abstract

Distributed Ledgers, such as blockchains implement business collaboration processes in the form of smart contracts (SCs). Blockchain technology and smart contracts have received significant attention as they exhibit autonomy, decentralization, trust, and transparency over peer-to-peer networks while moving the assets digitally among peers without a third-party such as lawyers in conventional contracts (CCs). Smart contracts are computerized scripts or protocols that execute contractual clauses when certain pre-defined conditions meet and thereby digitally enforce the negotiation and performance of a contract. Smart contracts, although, being self-executable and self-enforceable, are irreversible once written and lack contractual flexibility in the face of a contingency. A high degree of automation is sought to manifest blockchain enabled smart contracts into the so-called self-aware contracts (SAC) that can be aware of its internal contextual environment and the external environment or real-world events. This Ph.D. work aims to develop the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model based multi-agent system on the top of the blockchain technology-enabled smart contracts to yield the so-called self-aware contracts. This research follows the guidelines of Design Science Research (DSR) methodology.